


pressure points

by slyther_ing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Hook-Up, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Oliver is a mess tbh, Quidditch, and hookup w other ppl, for a decent amount of this fic, marcus and oliver are non-exclusive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-28 04:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18748801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slyther_ing/pseuds/slyther_ing
Summary: It's a pattern; Oliver caves into the gravitational pull of Flint's orbit whenever he's trying to escape everything else. The thing is, Flint lets him.The thing is - this can’t end neatly.(Or: a study in shades about coping mechanisms.)





	pressure points

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a while, flintwood.

The thing about Oliver is that he cries easy. He _feels_ easy, and the emotions are always visceral. Physical. Unfortunate, really - anger or happiness or disappointment, and the familiar heat builds behind his eyes and, well.

Well.

***

Flint lurks. That’s part of his calling card - he shadows Johnson on the pitch, hangs with his crew of seventh year Slytherins in the dungeons, and is always, always one step ahead of Oliver. That’s the only reason why Oliver finds himself hauled against the nearest stone wall, the roughness of the wall poking through the thin layer of his shirt.

“You bailing?”

“I don’t know what would make you think that,” Oliver mutters through the pressure at his throat, glaring back at Marcus.

He’s released with a huff, a disdainful toss, an ungraceful stumble back onto his two feet.

“People talk,” Marcus says shortly.

“Nobody talks about us.”

Flint appraises him with a cool eye. The hallway they’re in is dark and shadowed, but Oliver knows well enough that Marcus’ eyes are grey, flickering. Calculating. He never lets his guard down.

“That’s all you know.”

“I wouldn’t care if they did,” Oliver shoots back, brushing off the dust that clings to his robes. “Now fuck off. I have class.”

He starts walking away before Flint dismisses him. There’s something to be said for grappling for the upper hand.

***

“It’s supposed to be straight-forward. I don’t see how it can be this hard.” Percy’s sweating now, in the oddly warm autumn weather. He pulls at his collar and pushes his glasses up from where they’d been sliding down his nose.

Oliver bites his tongue. Nothing, in his opinion, is straight-forward about producing Patronuses. Think happy and focus, is what all the textbooks say. It’s easier to do in theory, when they’re not staring at the worn stone wall of a dusty Charms classroom. It’d be easier to do if he could think about _happy_. Every second here is another that he could be spending getting better on the pitch, and he’s always, always buzzing to get better.

“Let’s have another go, shall we?”

Oliver rolls up his sleeve, nods. He’s not keen on another attempt, but he can’t deny, he’s curious about what form it’ll take. A swallow? A hawk. Perhaps a lion, but Oliver doesn’t consider himself so deep a Gryffindor - not a Weasley, not through and through - that he’ll fall into the stereotype.

“Expecto Patronum!” Weasley calls, and a burst of silvery mist erupts appears. Percy huffs in frustration, turning to Oliver. “Go on, then.”

“Expecto Patronum,” Oliver calls, and a quick sputter of the same silvery mist appears, hangs in the air for a moment, before it vanishes. “Damn.”

Percy mutters under his breath, annoyance tangible. They pack up their books and belongings in silence, mutually recognized in defeat.

“What were you thinking about?”

“Quidditch,” Oliver responds, because that’s what’s expected of him.

***

“Can you cast a patronus?” Oliver asks the next time Marcus is mouthing at his neck, thighs bracketed between Oliver’s. They’re in the broom shed, because they’re walking cliches, and nobody will look for them here.

Granted, nobody ever looks for them unless it’s something about quidditch, unless it’s something about the games, and Oliver has gotten very, very good at predicting when those moments will be.

“What?”

“A patronus. Fights off dementors? Surely you’re not this stupid, Flint.”

“The hell you blathering on about?” Flint grumbles. He scrapes his teeth down the length of Oliver’s neck, and Oliver can’t fight the shudder that runs through him, involuntary.

Oliver sighs. “Merlin, I hate you.”

“You love this,” Flint leers.

He shakes Marcus off of him, sucking in his bottom lip under his teeth. It keeps the words - whether insults or affirmation, Oliver’s not sure - in place. Flint holds him in place with rough hands. Oliver acquiesces.

He glares at Marcus until the latter submits with a sigh of his own.

“You’re a dog with a bone, you know that, right? Managed it once,” Flint grumbles, tugging his shirt back round in order, “Yeah. Didn’t last long, though. Why?”

“What’d you think of?”

“Winning,” Flint says, shrugging. “Easy when you _have_ happy memories.”

Oliver kicks him in the shin, hard. He doesn’t attempt to correct the insult. They know each other well enough to know that Marcus is telling the truth, anyways.

***

“Where were you?” Angelina asks him when he shows up to practice five minutes late on Monday.

Oliver’s neck tingles from where Flint had kissed the side of it. How he’d torn himself away, had mumbled out an excuse, had run away the moment something big and ugly and terrifying creeped up in his chest. “Writing an essay. Got sidetracked.”

“Since when do you do homework?” Katie giggles, nudging Alicia in the side.

He ignores their teasing in favor of scribbling the plays he’s had running on end in his head onto the chalkboard. The chalk dries out his fingers, gets into the crooks of his calluses. He’d dug his nails so hard into the palms of his hands earlier today that there are still half-moon marks in his skin.

“Listen up, team,” he commands, and then all they can think about is winning and winning is, after all, everything.

***

Percy’s girlfriend is Penelope Clearwater, auburn curls always pushed back with a dark blue headband. Her posture is neat and proper, and looking at the two of them is like looking at mirror images. Prefect pins gleaming and straight on their robes, and two heads bent together over matching Arithmancy textbooks.

Oliver’s been sworn to secrecy for some reason. He knows that for Percy there’s an actual reason, what with the amount of siblings Percy’s got and how loose their tongues are. It doesn’t help the unease every time he sees them together. Like now that he’s in on the secret, he’s supposed to watch for eavesdroppers, act like a guard.

He supposes if anyone looks, it just looks like three sixth years, studying. It’s an odd group, but then again, not many people expect him to be friends with Percy Weasley.

“How are you, Wood?” Penelope asks one day when she gets to the library early, before Percy is done with his rounds.

“I’m alright,” Oliver replies, even though he and Marcus had had a rousing row over the fact that Marcus had kissed Felicity Coates over the weekend, and now they weren’t talking. Even though Oliver had well and truly brought it upon himself, anyways - sitting out in the rain on his broom until Marcus had yelled and called him mad and demanded he land.

He doesn’t say any of this. “Exhausted, but that’s training.”

“Percy always says you’re getting mud all over the dorm,” Penelope laughs, and Oliver can just imagine the exasperation.

“It’s not practice unless you’re bone tired,” Oliver smiles back, and the truth is nothing is worth it unless he’s like that anymore.

Percy settles into his seat then, dropping a great number of textbooks in front of him, and Penelope giggles, and he huffs and blows red bangs out of his eyes, and they ignore Oliver for the rest of the hour.

***

“What are you even pissed about,” Flint had shouted, running his hands over and over across his collar, “You don’t have shit to do with this - don’t you?”

Oliver hadn’t known what to say. He never does, not when the anger rises, the disdain, the urge to push back. All he’d known is that he’d _seen_ them, that he’d seen Flint’s _tongue_ go into Coate’s fucking mouth _,_ and it’s one thing to know that Flint doesn’t _just_ want him, and it’s another to see it.

“I don’t. You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“You’ve told me countless times to go _do whatever the fuck I want_ ,” Flint had mimicked, pushed for something more, even though all Oliver had wanted to do was retract. “Aren’t I? Aren’t you?”

“You’re so fucking difficult,” Marcus had continued, “So fucking difficult. I don’t even know why I bother with you anymore.”

“So don’t.”

“Fine. Fine.” Flint had glared, bitter, “You want it to be like this, go ahead.”

And then he’d left, and Oliver - well, Oliver hadn’t expected him to actually go.

***

“You’re so fucking difficult,” Marcus tells him the moment Oliver tracks him down and hauls him into the nearest broom cupboard and tugs insistently at Flint’s robes. He wants distractions, and Marcus has always been good at giving him that.

“I’m doing whatever the fuck I want,” Oliver shoots back, and then he’s digging his thumbs into Marcus’ hipbones and trying to get their mouths to connect. “Fucking hell, Flint. Just - just. Please.”

Flint’s break in resolve is palpable, a release of breath. “What’s with you now?”

Oliver’s vibrating out of his skin, is what it is. It’s the warring urges to keep running in circles on the track - a bone-numbing weight on his body when he lies in bed - and the sudden overarching push to drive his broom into the ground and vanish at the point of impact.

“Nothing. Nothing,” Oliver mutters. He pushes up close so Marcus drops the subject, because he always gets his way when they’re close like this.

If he shakes the moment Marcus runs his palms over the nape of his neck, if his eyes are clenched shut because of his refusal to cry, god _damnit_ , Marcus doesn’t comment. They’ve done this long enough that Flint knows not to.

***

 _What do you want me to do now?_ Marcus writes to him in mid-July, after a first confessional about how he’d failed his NEWTs, and a second confessional that had made Oliver try and sleep for three days and that he refuses to reread.

 _Come play quidditch,_ Oliver writes back finally. Quidditch is safe. Quidditch is about winning and losing and it’s a place where he thinks happiness can be in easy enough reach. And quidditch is where he can have Marcus without feeling guilty.

“So?” Marcus asks the first day he shows up in the large field a few kilometers out from Oliver’s house.

“So what?” Oliver answers.

Marcus drops it.  

***

“Weasley? You and _Weasley_?” Flint says with disdain, broad frame leaning back against the torn leather of the booth they’re sitting in. His arms are crossed, robes straining over his biceps. Oliver notes, suddenly, that Flint’s gotten even stronger over the summer holidays. Oliver wonders how much of it is for reputation, how much of it is preemptive armor.

Oliver leans back, Butterbeer dangling from the tips of his fingers. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing is anything to you unless it’s quidditch,” Marcus snorts, dragging his fork over the remnants of his lunch. Oliver has the urge to knock the small cup of gravy over the whole table, let it soak into the wood and grease up the expanse of table between them.

“Why does it even matter to you?”

“It doesn’t.” Flint sneers. It’s a sneer reminiscent of all pureblood scions, all the sons who shadow their fathers in the Ministry and watch the political power play at work in the halls.

“Well then.” Oliver says.

He reaches over for a chip. Marcus pushes his plate away from Oliver’s reach.

Flint scoffs. “Whatever. Come crawling back when your head’s screwed on straight.”

It’s the same line Oliver had told him the summer before, when Marcus had been fooling around with a string of people, always someone different by the week at his shoulder or his right hand. It hadn’t been a betrayal - they didn’t have anything well-wrought enough to warrant a betrayal, both selfish about whatever this was. But it’d made Oliver grit his teeth. And he won’t ever admit, but it’d made him cry.

Flint had always come back, even if crawling was some sort of exaggeration. Oliver appraises Marcus from across the table, the hard jut of Flint’s jaw that indicates his rival’s annoyance, and knows he’s probably going to do the same.

“Oliver?”

They both turn to see a familiar face - Katie Bell, tanned and arms laden with shopping bags, eyes wide at stumbling upon their camaraderie.

“What are you doing - here?” Bell asks.

“Nothing,” Oliver responds, throwing down a handful of whatever money is in his pocket, “I was just leaving. Let’s walk out?”

She nods minutely, still staring at Flint. Marcus doesn’t make a move to stop him, doesn’t call after him. Neither of them ever do. Oliver gestures for Katie to follow him out into the setting summer sun.

***

As it turns out, Oliver fights crawling back to comfort for a good three months. It takes all of him, really, not to go running the first few weeks, and then he’d coped, and then he’d found that if he just slept for longer, it made things easier.

Percy expresses his concern, a nudge for meals, light wheedling to get Oliver to at least do his assignments. At that Oliver leaps up from bed and says he’s going for a run. Exercise banishes Percy Weasley faster than Oliver can ask for, and then he’s left to be in peace. Or to wallow.

As it turns out, Oliver can remain high-functioning for about three months before things feel like they spiral out of control, and that when they plummet, they plummet hard.

“You’re such an idiot,” Marcus calls out to him through the locker room. It’s deserted. Oliver had made sure of it before his attempt to drown himself in the showers. Pity parties over losing to Hufflepuff are a private thing.

“Fuck off,” Oliver calls back.

“What’s the point of ruining yourself like this? It’s pathetic.”

“Fuck off.” Oliver yells again. It doesn’t deter Flint a bit, one dark eyebrow raised in distaste. Large hands manhandle him off of the floor, drag him across the tiles and deposits him by a row of lockers.

“I wasn’t actually going to drown myself,” Oliver tells him.

“Sure.” Flint says, and he knows Marcus doesn’t believe him. “Get up. Get up.”

“Fuck off,” Oliver says again, broken record on repeat.

Marcus hauls him up by the armpits, grips hard enough to squeeze the water from Oliver’s sodden shirt. He’s brought back to the benches where a stack of towels are sitting freshly laundered. “Good luck with that.”

“I wasn’t.” Oliver says stubbornly.

“Right,” Marcus says, wrapping him in towels. “Right. Because you’re anything but self-destructive, right?”

Oliver tips his head back onto the wooden bench, stares at the faintly grey ceilings of the lockers. He wishes the steam was as useful for camouflage as it is for making him feel like choking. “I’m not.”

“Right,” Marcus sighs, “Because that’s not at all why we’re like this, right?”

“That’s just how you and I are.”

“You know fully fucking well what I want, you just won’t admit-”

“Shut up,” Oliver grits his teeth. “Shut up, shut up, _shut up_.”

He gets up, throws the towel at Flint’s face so he can avoid feeling the concern, and runs and runs and runs until he can’t feel his lungs. By the time he’s doubled over, clutching at a stitch in his side, he realizes he’s halfway up the stairs to the Gryffindor common room.

He owes Marcus an apology. He owes Marcus a thank you. Instead, Oliver hurls his wand at the floor.

***

“It was once. We were drunk and he was sad over Clearwater and I was there.”

“Figured. You were sad too, weren’t you?”

“Fuck off,” Oliver hisses back, hands shaking where they’re clenched around his broom and the strap of his bookbag. “I’m sorry. Okay? I - you and I both do this. Not that we can’t. But I’m sorry.”

Flint is leaning on a desk that looks almost too small for him - the kind with initials carved on it from third years who are still eager and bright eyed and giggling behind their first relationships. Oliver vaguely remembers that, but it tastes faint, like a flavor he can’t quite put his finger on. Fake peach bubblegum, cherry lime gumdrops - something weird and slightly off and forcefully artificial.

“I stopped, you know? With other people.” Flint says abruptly. “When I wrote you. Over the summer. I’ve made up my mind.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Oliver panics, throat suddenly closing up. “Please. Marcus.”

“Alright,” Flint raises both hands, eyes low and avoiding his. “Whatever you want.”

***

He stays in bed for another three days over winter break, and the only reason he gets out is because his mother demands he joins the extended family for Christmas dinner.

“You’ve done so well,” His aunt tells him over dessert, “Almost done! What’ll you do after Hogwarts?”

 _I don’t know_ , Oliver wants to say, _I don’t know, I never know._ Past this is just a blank abyss, and Oliver has planned out everything else in his life, down to the second, so minute in his detail that he’s unsure how to take the next step.

“I’m thinking of trying out for some teams,” He says instead, and smiles at the mouthed ‘wow’ from his aunt.

“Big man, huh?” His uncle swoops in from behind, hitting him hard on the shoulder, “You’ll be the one to make it. Every little kid’s dream to play in the big leagues.”

“Don’t say that, you’ll blow his ego too big,” his cousin snickers, and Oliver laughs along, loud and correct in his timing.

***

 _Come practice_ , he writes to Marcus the day after the holidays. He’s getting stir crazy from all the people. He can’t imagine Flint’s manor is any better.

 _It’s fucking freezing out_ , Marcus writes back, but he shows up the next day all the same.

“If I lose a finger, it’s on you,” Flint warns him, and Oliver launches himself into the air before Marcus can catch him cracking a smile. It feels good. The cold air whipping him in the face feels good, too.

Flint doesn’t react for what feels like ages, standing and watching him fly up and up and up, until he finally pushes off on his own broom. He hangs back, just a broom’s length behind Oliver. They don’t really practice, just fly and hover and loop lazily over and over in the sky.

Marcus pulls to a hover as the wind gets too strong for their clothes. He meets Oliver’s eyes, and when Oliver averts his gaze, he sighs.

“What’s your problem with me?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Bullshit.”

Flint waits so expectantly, Oliver feels like he owes him - something. Not all of it, but enough.

“I hate...” Oliver starts, suddenly frighteningly honest, but he doesn’t know where this sentence is supposed to go - how he hates a lot of things, but all of them are his own fault. The itching need under his skin whenever Marcus stops touching him, how he can’t imagine bringing anyone down into the hole with him, how he doesn’t know how to put anything into words anymore, how he can’t let go of this regardless of how much he hates _needing_.

“I hate how I feel.” He settles on, and then he looks at his hands against his broom handle and hopes that’s enough.

“M’sorry.” Flint offers. When Oliver looks up, Marcus is watching him with a furrowed brow and a sympathetic frown. Oliver wishes he liked Marcus’ face a lot less than he does. He wishes he cared a lot less about what Marcus thought of him, too.

“Yeah,” Oliver shrugs, and then he loops over Flint’s shoulder and blinks to focus on the sky in front of them.

***

Oliver’s not an idiot, knows that Roger Davies is up to something after the third time running into him on his way to the pitch - their schedules don’t line up, not unless one of them makes it so, and Oliver sticks to his like glue. Davies is coy, and mischievous, and has definitely heard enough rumors to solidify something about Oliver into something actionable.

“What are you doing on Friday, Wood?” Davies asks, eager and fresh faced when he accosts Oliver in the hallway. They’re already the same height, though Davies is two years younger, and Davies knows confidence in spades.

“Nothing,” Oliver answers honestly.

“My team was thinking it’d be worth some inter-house unity between the teams before it gets nasty,” Davies smiles, teeth flashing. “And we thought - ”

“You all just want an excuse to party,” Oliver snorts, hoisting his broom higher on his shoulder.

Davies shrugs. “Maybe. But Diggory’s team wants to too, and you know the Slytherins never turn down free alcohol. Tell your team. Think about it, yeah?”

Davies waves over his shoulder. Oliver watches him jog away, wonders what it’s like to live life with the intent of fun.

“Oh please, Oliver,” Katie pleads when he brings up Davie’s offer moments later - Oliver is many things, but he’s still a responsible relayer of messages -  “Let’s have fun, let’s go.”

“I don’t understand,” Oliver says, “Why you’d want to party with the Slytherins.”

“Who gives a crap about the Slytherins,” Angelina rolls her eyes, “Diggory and Davies make up for it - c’mon Wood, the castle’s boring enough as it is these days.”

“You all can go,” Oliver sighs, giving up on tactics for today and rubbing his eyelids with his knuckles. “Just don’t sleep through tomorrow morning’s practice, alright?”

“Fat chance,” Fred snorts, “You’re coming with us, dead or alive.”

Alcohol and Marcus in the vicinity is a bad idea ready to explode. Getting on the Weasley twins shit list is also arguably dangerous territory. He’s too tired to weigh the pros and cons, to figure out which scenario is worse, so he caves to the pressure of his team’s needling.

He regrets it the moment he wakes up on Friday. It’s one of those days where he goes crawling to Flint, would dig himself deep into distraction after distraction until the next time he could hide in his bed. But there’s an obligation and he’s never shied away from one, no matter how bad he’s gotten.

The regret intensifies the moment he steps into the party, held in some abandoned wing of the castle that Fred and George had helped sanction off. They’re the last to have come, the Ravenclaw team already sloppy by the side, the Slytherins already lurking in a corner with what looks like their own stores of gin.

Marcus is loose-limbed around his teammates, glowering at a comment that Bole just made - it’s a good look on him, red slightly high on his cheeks, makes him look more alive than normal. There’s a casual sense of belonging between all the boys on the Slytherin team that Oliver has always envied. The easy needling and jeering that the Slytherin team has amongst themselves is an odd sort of camaraderie, but an impenetrable team nonetheless. Oliver catches himself staring a little too long.

“Here,” Angelina shoves a cup into his hand, drawing him out of his lull, “Loosen up for once, Wood.”

And the thing is, if distraction is what he’s looking for for today, alcohol can very easily be one of them.

As are other things.

Hilliard is a Ravenclaw Beater and prefect, tall and blonde and very charming, as Percy has always framed it for Oliver. They’ve acknowledged each other fleetingly in class, had been partnered up for maybe one exercise or another. Oliver hadn’t given it much thought. He would’ve assumed Hilliard hadn’t either, until Davies had dragged him over for shots of Firewhiskey and nudged Oliver into his chest.

“Sorry,” Oliver says as he splashes his drink over Hilliard’s shirt. His tongue is thick from alcohol; he’s unsure what exactly he’s doing here until Davies flashes a grin, until he realizes Hilliard’s eyes are hooded - and then it makes sense, why he’d been seeked out.

“Let’s go?” Hilliard says by his ear as Oliver downs his drink, and before he can think of the reasons to say no - _practice tomorrow morning, his teammates shooting smirks at one another, Marcus watching him from across the room right now, Marcus’  thumbs running over his cheekbones to anchor him just four hours ago, Marcus -_ he’s led willingly out of the party.

***

“You’re drunk,” Percy says disapprovingly as Oliver stumbles back into their dorm at three in the morning, shirt half on and throat sore and self-loathing high in his chest.

“I’ve made Marcus hate me,” Oliver manages out, splayed flat on his back on the ground because the spinning of his head has gotten to be too much. He says it before he remembers that Percy isn’t aware about Flint, that it’s not something he’s said aloud, ever.

“I truly doubt that,” Percy says after a moment, too gentle for Oliver to accept.

“You don’t - I’ve done things. I deserve it.”

Percy shuffles some papers, puts a pillow down by the floor, and settles a hand in Oliver’s hair. “Whatever it is, I doubt that, too.”

***

When Oliver looks up from pressing at the bruises on his upper thigh, Marcus is leaning against the open door of the Gryffindor locker room, arms folded and face neutral.

They hadn’t talked since the party, not really. Had barely exchanged two words in passing. It’d been largely Oliver’s choice - had laid everything out to Percy and been told, with the harshest of truths possible only from a friend who cares, that he’d been acting like a selfish bastard, that no one, not even Flint, deserved to be kept on call for when he was wanted and pushed away when he wasn’t.

The thing that Oliver hadn’t told Percy was that he wanted Marcus all the time, so often that admitting it would hurt, would be finally exposing the wound instead of patching it up over and over again.

“Hey,” Oliver says through the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry you lost.”

“No you’re not,” Flint says, and it’s amicable, almost amused. And the truth, but they both know that already. “Still. Good game.”

“You like me bruised and beaten up, Flint?”

Marcus cocks his head, setting sun catching the side of his face from behind, expression softening in a way that Oliver doesn’t deserve. “I like _you_.”

Oliver scoffs, but he catches the bandages Flint tosses his way all the same. His muscles protest as he stretches them out, trying to reach the tenderest part of his shoulder. “Tell me you didn’t let me win.”

“I said I like you, Wood, not that I’m mad.”

Oliver presses into one of his bruises again, recalls the slam of the quaffle hitting into his chest and the nasty elbow Marcus had thrown into his side, and admits that it’s believable.

Marcus reaches over to run the callused part of his thumb over the nape of Oliver’s neck. Pulls him in until Oliver’s head tips back, and presses their lips together. Oliver feels the strain of his muscles in protest, the ache of each portion of his body that got beaten by a bludger, and revels in Marcus’ hold against his collarbone.

“Tell Hilliard to stop poking his nose around,” Marcus murmurs against his mouth. “Tell him to fuck off. Tell everyone else to fuck off.”

The guilt rears its head, ugly and loud and roaring in Oliver’s ears. Marcus looks calm, though, firm in his conviction and a little resigned. As if he knows what Oliver’s going to say next, and regardless, will keep on asking anyways.

“Why,” Oliver swallows, “Do you still bother with me?”

“Haven’t felt different in years, have I?” Marcus tugs at a loose end of the bandage that has unraveled without Oliver realizing. “You gonna stop pushing me away?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were,” Flint says bluntly, firmly. “You always fucking are. And now you got what you wanted - the cup, scouts trailing after you, and your housemates half in love with you because you won them the year. You gonna stop beating yourself up?”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Oliver admits quietly, and it feels good, almost - to admit that maybe there’d never be a clean cut resolution. He feels a little less like he’s running out of time. “I’m a lot worse off than you probably know.”

Marcus clicks his tongue, runs a hand over his close cropped hair, settles his elbows on his knees and stares out of the locker room. “You think I don’t know when you’re going to come looking for me? Hell, you think Weasley can’t tell when you’re having a bad week? You’re good at keeping your plays secret, Wood, not at hiding your emotions. Give me some credit.”

“You talk to Percy?”

“I care about you,” Marcus says plainly, cracking his knuckles, “Even when you don’t want me around.”

It’s so honest that Oliver can’t breathe for a split second, needs to exhale at the worry in Flint’s person so as to keep himself from suffocating.

“Thing is,” Oliver says slowly, because the moment is too delicate to step on and he’s worried one wrong thing is going to drive Marcus away for good. “Thing is, I do want you around. A lot. _All the fucking time_ . And it’s horrible, because I - just treat you like a distraction, and that’s unfair, but it’s worse because I _need_ you, like - I’m a mess. I’m not in a good place. And I can’t keep using you to fix things, because that’s not healthy for me and completely fucking unfair to you.”

Flint doesn’t say anything after Oliver manages to shut himself up with a hand pressed hard against his own mouth. His eyes are grey and dark and so intense and direct that Oliver can’t look at him for longer than a beat.

“You know,” Marcus says, after the silence stretches on, “When I imagined you winning the quidditch cup, I thought you’d be so insufferably proud I’d want to punch you.

And against his better judgment, Oliver laughs. Sniffles. Flint’s right - this whole thing is kind of absurd and dramatic and has been dragged out for far too long. Marcus’ returning grin lightens the mood about them - at the end of the day, they’re just two players in the locker rooms, figuring things out.

“I’m sorry - I’ve been a right asshole.” Oliver apologizes, sincere.

Marcus shrugs, runs his hand over his hair again. “Yeah. I’ve been too, though - pushing for something you’re not in the place for. Let’s not pretend I’ve been a saint about other people, either.”

Olivers sighs. The physical strain of the final quidditch match of the year is settling in now that the adrenaline has died down, and what he really wants is a sandwich, having been too filled with nerves and anxiety to eat anything at breakfast. He’s already heard the chattering from his team, the celebration in Gryffindor tower in the works.

Marcus brushes his shoulder against his, settles solid by his side on the bench they sit on. Oliver realizes, then, that he feels lighter than he has in months.

“Look,” Marcus says, “Write me when you want, yeah? For quidditch, or whatever. I don’t expect anything, but I’m also not seeing anyone else any time soon. Just - take care of yourself, for once, Wood.”

Flint stands, stretches to his full height. It’s only now that Oliver notices he’s changed out of his quidditch uniform, back in normal Hogwarts colors - the lack of Slytherin green for some reason a stark contrast. It’s only now that he realizes how stupid the division will be post graduation. No more lines to stay within, no more self-inflicted hiding. Still, he also realizes how much he’ll miss the comfort of the dark green against Marcus’ skin.

“I’ll write you,” Oliver says, the first promise he’s adamant to sticking to. Marcus offers a hand, pulls Oliver up so that they’re both standing.

Marcus shrugs again, smiles slightly in the way he does that changes his whole face. “You know where to find me if you do.”

Flint’s hand lingers for a moment before releasing his hold, strolls out with two fingers cocked in farewell, and Oliver thinks that maybe he’d always assumed they would be messier than they actually are.

***

~~_How’s quidditch;How’s your new flat;I heard about Montrose;I miss you in a way where I don’t know what to do with myself but in a better way;I feel better recently that’s good right;I hope you’re good;I think I’m in love with you though it doesn’t make sense;Do you still_ ~~

_Dinner this Friday. You free?_

 

_.Time and place, Wood. I’ll be there_

**Author's Note:**

> this is an odd, self-indulgent fic that's truly a departure from how I usually write Oliver but it was incredibly interesting creatively, digging into his head and emotions - and Marcus has his shit relatively together! for once! wow!
> 
> "relationships are messy" was basically the starting point for this fic and then it grew to....this lol - hope you enjoyed!


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